Open Government Data: A European Perspective - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 6

public companies and limited liability partnerships, but not companies that already
comply with disclosure rules under the U.K. Disclosure and Transparency Rules
(OGP, 2014).

1.3 Making PSi Available

According to the research conducted as part of the ENGAGE (2011) project, PSI
can be provided in the following ways:

◾ OGD catalogue aggregators. These websites provide a single access point
from which to locate all other PSI portals and initiatives that publish and
maintain lists of PSI catalogues. A good example of this is the European
project “Public Sector Information,” which compiles the data sets released by
government bodies (Peset, Ferrer-Sapena, & Subirats-Coll, 2011).
◾ Web-based platforms for sharing data source URLs. These websites function
as a record of PSI sources in a hierarchically organized machine-processable
format. For example, the CKAN generalized data hub portal and the OGD
Initiative apply a Microsoft online tool to publish and use a broad range of
public data supplied by government agencies.

◾ Public Sector Sources and Open Data initiatives. This is the main category of

OGD portals and contains public websites and other initiatives that publish
original information. In most cases, these initiatives assume responsibility for
the entire lifecycle of the data and are also the legal owners.

One of the keys to realizing the full potential of the PSI made available is the user's
ability to locate the necessary information. This is often achieved by means of a data
catalogue tool containing structured OGD records and enabling the use of metadata
(Cyganiak & Maali, 2012; Kučera, Chlapek, & Nečaský, 2013). On the other hand,
Cunningham (2012) argued that if the metadata are inadequate, they will be difficult
to manage, the PSI will not be best used, and public money will be wasted.
For a data catalogue to perform satisfactorily, and to be of sufficient quality, it must
meet certain requirements, such as accuracy, completeness, consistency, and timeliness
(Batini, Cappiello, Francalanci, & Maurino, 2009). In accordance with these demands,

◾

All the information recorded in the catalogue should match the data described.

◾

The entire set of OGD published must be recorded, with no omissions.

◾

All catalogue records must be consistent, with no contradictions or discrepan-
cies; the same terms or concepts should be used to classify data of the same
type or category, and unknown information should be treated in the same way.

◾

All the information recorded in the catalogue must be current, not only in
time but also in its location in the catalogue.